Confrontation, repression in Correa's Ecuador

Rafael Correa's administration has led Ecuador into a new era of widespread repression by pre-empting private news broadcasts, enacting restrictive legal measures, smearing critics, and filing debilitating defamation lawsuits. A CPJ special report by Carlos Lauría

Published September 1, 2011

QUITO, Ecuador

Jeanette Hinostroza, anchor of the Teleamazonas newsmagazine "30 Plus" and regular critic of President Rafael Correa, knew she had
more fodder for her commentary when she learned in April that a woman had been
charged with disrespecting the two-term Ecuadoran leader. Correa had abused his
authority and demeaned his office, Hinostroza told viewers, by ordering the
woman’s arrest based on what he considered to be an insulting gesture.

It wasn’t long before Hinostroza found herself in the
crosshairs of Correa, a president who freely calls reporters “ignorant” and
“liars.” The next day, the Correa administration ordered Teleamazonas, a
Quito-based private network known for its criticism of the president’s
policies, to pre-empt 10 minutes of Hinostroza’s program with a harsh and
personal rebuttal from a government spokesman who called her ethics into
question. That Saturday, during his weekly address on state radio, Correa went
on to question Hinostroza’s intellect, mocking her as a “redhead” who should be
ignored. Teleamazonas is a favorite target of the administration, having been
ordered off
the air for three days in 2009 after running a story about the effect of
natural gas exploration on the local fishing industry. But Teleamazonas is
hardly alone.

Correa, a 48-year-old left-leaning economist, brooks no
dissent from the news media and, in less than five years, has turned Ecuador into
one of the hemisphere’s most restrictive nations for the press. Promising a
“citizens’ revolution” that would boost revenue from the country’s natural
resources, Correa took office in January 2007 with substantial support from
mainstream news media. But after vowing to fight what he called Ecuador’s
corrupt elite, he took an aggressively adversarial stance against news media,
which threatens the internationally guaranteed free expression rights of all of
his citizens.

As it did in the Hinostroza case, the Correa administration
has repeatedly forced individual broadcasters to air lengthy government
rebuttals to critical news reports, thus supplanting independent viewpoints
with its own. On hundreds of other occasions, the administration has pre-empted
all broadcast programming nationwide for presidential addresses known as cadenas,
which, though traditionally used to deliver information in times of crisis,
have become a forum for political confrontation. This coerced pre-emption is
part of an alarming record of official censorship and anti-press harassment
that also includes the use of defamation laws to silence critics, smear
campaigns to discredit them, and ballot measures to regulate news content and
media ownership, a CPJ investigation has found. At the same time, the
government has built one of the region’s most extensive state media operations,
a network of more than 15 television, radio, and print outlets that serves
largely as a presidential megaphone.

High-ranking members of the Correa administration did not
respond to CPJ’s requests to meet with its representatives during an April
fact-finding mission, and did not respond to subsequent requests for comment.

Defamation cases as retaliatory tools

Local press freedom advocates are deeply concerned. “It has
become difficult for the press to work free of government interference.
Official harassment of critical reporters has increased substantially,” said
César Ricaurte, executive director of the Andean Foundation for Media
Observation & Study, known as Fundamedios, which has
documented more than 380 free press violations from January 2008 through July
2011. From 22 documented cases in 2008, abuses spiraled to 151 in 2010 and are
on pace to far exceed that level this year, according to the group.

Correa has led the way in filing debilitating defamation
complaints against independent journalists. In March, he brought a criminal
complaint against three executives and an editor of the Guayaquil-based
newspaper El
Universo in connection with an opinion piece that referred to him as “the
dictator.” The author, opinion editor Emilio Palacio, alleged that Correa had
ordered troops to fire “without warning on a hospital full of civilians and
innocent people” during a violent labor standoff with national police in September 2010. (Angered by planned pay cuts, rebellious police officers effectively
barricaded Correa in the hospital for about 12 hours, prompting the government
to summon troops to the scene. The nationwide police protests—which led to
three fatalities, dozens of injuries, and the shutdown of airports and
highways—also marked a low point in government restrictions on the news media.
The communications secretary ordered broadcasters to halt their own news
reports and carry only state news programming for about six hours during the
height of the crisis.)

Shortly before the defamation trial began, Palacio stepped
down from El Universo in hopes that his resignation would prompt Correa to
withdraw his complaint. As the trial commenced in July, the daily’s directors
said the paper would print a correction and invited the president to write
it himself. Correa rejected the idea. Less than 24 hours after the trial
started, a Guayaquil
judge issued
a decision that would send the four defendants to jail for three years each
and have them and El Universo pay a total of $40 million in damages. All four
appealed the decision. So did Correa, who wanted $80 million in damages,
although he claimed he would use the money to support Yasuni National Park.

CPJ
research shows that other Ecuadoran officials have followed the president’s
lead in using the country’s outdated criminal defamation provisions to
retaliate against critical journalists. In the northern city of Esmeraldas, radio
journalist Walter Vite Benítez was sentenced
in May to a year in prison on criminal defamation charges related to his
critical comments about a local mayor’s performance. (A subsequent court
decision led to Vite’s release, although the narrow ruling found only that the
statute of limitations had expired.) In 2008, provincial journalists Freddy
Aponte Aponte and Milton Nelson Chacaguasay Flores were
jailed on criminal defamation charges related to critical comments about
local officials. In a region where imprisonment of journalists has been rare
outside of Cuba,
the recent criminal prosecutions have been striking.

Ecuador’s
criminal defamation laws run counter to the emerging consensus in Latin America that civil remedies provide adequate
redress in cases of alleged libel or slander. In December 2009, the Costa Rican
Supreme Court eliminated prison
terms for criminal defamation. One month earlier, in November 2009, the
Argentine Congress repealed criminal
defamation provisions as they pertain to matters of public interest. And in
April 2009, Brazil’s
Supreme Federal Tribunal voided the
1967 Press Law, a measure that had imposed harsh penalties for libel and
slander. Regional precedent also holds that public officials should not enjoy
protection from public scrutiny. “Public officials are subject to greater
scrutiny by society,” states the Declaration of Principles on Freedom of
Expression, adopted by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 2000. “Laws
that penalize offensive expressions directed at public officials restrict
freedom of expression and the right to information.”

The president has used civil avenues as well, pressing a $10
million defamation lawsuit against investigative journalists Juan Carlos
Calderón and Christian Zurita, authors of the book El Gran Hermano (The Big
Brother), which details allegations of official corruption. The investigation,
first published in a six-part 2009 series in the Quito-based daily Expreso, alleged that
companies belonging to Fabricio Correa, the president’s older brother, had
obtained $600 million in state contracts, largely for road construction. Ecuadoran
law bars presidential family members from using their relationships for
economic gain. Although President Correa canceled the contracts and said he was
unaware of the arrangements, he was so angered by the investigation that he
devoted three cadenas to discrediting the book and its authors.

Calderón, an editor with the Quito-based weekly Vanguardia, and Zurita, a reporter
for Expreso, are
straining under the financial and professional costs imposed by the suit, which
remains pending. Likening himself and his colleague to struggling boxers, Zurita said, “We have
our backs against the ropes to see how we are going to defend ourselves.” With
possible damages of such magnitude, they say, the lawsuit is creating a
chilling effect on the Ecuadoran media and its ability to report on corruption
and government transparency. “Official intimidation is fostering a climate of
self-censorship among some media and colleagues,” Calderón told CPJ. “Some
media are not covering and following accusations of official corruption made by
the political opposition.”

A state of repression

Over the course of Correa’s tenure, the administration has
created an elaborate legal framework to restrict news media. In a May
referendum, voters approved by close margins a series of administration-backed
ballot questions that strengthened executive branch powers, including two
measures that harm press freedom.

The first question—posed with the prejudicial explanation
that “media excesses” needed to be curbed—asked Ecuadorans to approve in concept
a communications law that would, in turn, create a media regulatory council.
The precise text of the law must be approved by the National Assembly, which is
now debating the bill. But the proposed provisions are ominous. Article 11, for instance, would forbid
“the use of violent, bloody, and death-related images” in news coverage deemed
to have insufficient context, and the new regulatory council would be
authorized, among its many proposed powers, to make that contextual
determination. Under the proposal, the council would regulate radio,
television, and print content in broad and vaguely defined areas such as
violence, sex, and discrimination, unilaterally setting penalties for
violations. The council’s independence appears questionable since five of its
seven members would either be appointed by the executive branch or be chosen
from groups with close ties to the executive.

Although Correa’s Alianza País party controls the assembly,
lawmakers have resisted repressive press measures in the past, rejecting the
president’s 2010 effort to enact a restrictive communications law. Now, though,
with the weight of the referendum behind the measure, the administration
appears able to leverage the bill’s passage.

The other ballot measure bars “private national media
companies, executives, and main shareholders from holding assets in other
companies.” Principals in media companies must divest within two years under
the provision, which still requires enabling legislation. Journalists and free
press advocates said the measure is intended to weaken the finances of media
that oppose government policies. The Ecuadorian Association of Newspaper
Editors has already challenged
the provision in the country’s constitutional court, arguing that it
contradicts existing constitutional guarantees. The ballot measure constitutes
“the elimination of fundamental rights for media companies, their directors,
and shareholders,” said Diego Cornejo, president of the editors group. It also
appears to run counter to free expression guarantees enshrined in Article 13 of
the American Convention on Human Rights, CPJ’s analysis found.

Supporters of the measure said it would democratize the
media. In published interviews, Communications Secretary Fernando Alvarado said
the legislation would promote diversity in the press.

A confrontational approach

Correa insists he’s fighting irresponsible journalism
exercised by a small, elite group of media owners who hold too much power and
are bent on toppling him to further their economic interests. His
up-by-the-bootstraps background offers some insight into his press policies.

Born in 1963 in Guayaquil, an industrial port and Ecuador’s
largest city, Correa endured a difficult childhood. His father, an
entrepreneur, was arrested on charges of trying to smuggle cocaine into the
United States and spent three years in an Atlanta prison in the late 1960s,
according to news reports. But Correa flourished in academia, studying in the
United States and Europe and earning a doctorate in economics from the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He was appointed finance minister
in April 2005 but was forced to resign four months later when he failed to
consult President Alfredo Palacio before publicly blasting the World Bank for
denying Ecuador a loan.

When Correa took office as president in 2007, he became the
latest of several leftist leaders who came to power in the region by running
against traditional elites and the free-market policies of the United States. He
moved quickly to strengthen his powers, winning voter approval for a special
assembly to rewrite the constitution. The revised constitution, which took
effect in 2008, allowed him to seek re-election through 2017 and broadened
executive powers over the legislative and judicial branches along with economic
policy.

Press freedom advocates were especially concerned about two
other provisions in the 2008 constitutional revision. Article 19 introduced the
concept of government intervention in news media, saying, “The law will
regulate the prevalence of informational, educational, and cultural content in
the media’s programming and will promote the creation of spaces for national
and independent producers.” Article 18 stated that all individuals have the
right to “find, receive, exchange, produce, and release truthful, verified,
timely, contextualized, and plural information without censorship.” The text’s
emphasis on “truthful, verified” information opened the door to official
restrictions on information that the government disputed.

Yet another provision, Article 312, barred bankers from
owning media companies. Media analysts said the prohibition was aimed at
weakening Teleamazonas. By September 2010, station owner Fidel Egas, a
principal in Pichincha Bank, sold his ownership stake to local, Peruvian, and
Spanish investors. Anchor Jorge Ortiz, who hosted the critical talk show “La
Hora de Jorge Ortiz,” resigned from the network a month before the sale was
completed, saying he didn’t want to stand in the way of the acquisition, which
needed government authorization.

Historically, Ecuadoran broadcast media had been controlled
by powerful banking groups with close ties to politicians and political power
bases, CPJ
research shows. Some broadcasters were criticized, even within the
profession, for not vigorously investigating the banking crisis that caused the
collapse of several financial institutions in 2000 and cost taxpayers hundreds
of millions of dollars. But today’s media landscape is generally diverse and
vibrant, CPJ research shows. Radio and television have large audiences,
especially in the metropolitan areas of Quito and Guayaquil. Hundreds of radio
stations operate around the country, among them numerous community and
indigenous broadcasters in provincial regions. Five private television
networks—Ecuavisa, Teleamazonas, RTS, Telerama, and Canal Uno—and more than 35
daily newspapers offer a wide range of opinions, analyses, and political
perspectives, CPJ analysis found.

Yet Correa continues to beat a drum against media owners. In
May, he used
a cadena to criticize media companies for having interests in other
businesses, including real estate, tourism, and insurance, and asserted that
diverse holdings pose inherent conflicts of interests. “Many of these companies
have policies directed to other businesses, commercial and private, in the name
of freedom of expression,” Correa said.

State media as political megaphone

When Correa took office in 2007, state media consisted of a
single radio network, Radio Nacional de Ecuador. In a remarkably short time, he
has erected an extensive state media operation.

The foundation was built in large part on a 2008 government
takeover of two private television stations, TC Televisión and Gama TV, and
several other media outlets owned by Grupo Isaías, whose principals, Roberto
and William Isaías, allegedly owed $661 million to Ecuador after the 1998
collapse of their banking institution, Filanbanco. The government takeover
encompassed nearly 200 other businesses, but the television stations were
especially valuable since they drew nearly 40 percent of the country’s news
audience. At the time, Correa promised that his administration would sell the
media assets to recover money owed to Ecuadorans. “He never fulfilled his
promise,” said Tania Tinoco, a prominent anchor with the privately owned
television station Ecuavisa. “Something similar happened with his pledge to
preserve the media’s editorial line. All those outlets are used for government
propaganda.”

In the next three years, the administration continued
investing heavily in state media—the exact amount has not been disclosed—as it
built an operation that now consists of several TV stations (TC Televisión,
Gama TV, and Ecuador TV, and cable stations CN3 and CD7), radio stations (Radio
Pública de Ecuador, Radio Carrousel, Radio Super K 800, and Radio Universal),
newspapers (El Telégrafo, PP El Verdadero, and El Ciudadano), magazines (La
Onda, El Agro, Valles, and Samborondón), and a news agency (Agencia Pública de
Noticias del Ecuador y Suramérica). The government considers the former Grupo
Isaías outlets to be “confiscated” private media, although they are managed by
the state and “are clearly used as a tool for political communication,” said
Ricaurte of Fundamedios.

“The state has transformed itself as a communications
player,” Ricaurte said, “from being irrelevant when Correa took office in 2007
to now having a leading role.” In building a state media network, the Correa
administration has followed the lead of other regional leaders who have
invested in government media to further their political agendas. Venezuela’s
President Hugo Chávez is the prime example. Since 2002, the Chávez
administration has invested hundreds of millions in building a vast media
apparatus that has challenged the influence of the private press. In Nicaragua,
the government of Daniel Ortega uses official
media—including broadcasters, websites, and an email news service—to wage
counter-attacks against its critics.

To an even greater extent than his regional counterparts,
Correa uses state media to discredit journalists who oppose the
administration’s policies. The president often devotes his Saturday radio
broadcast to launching verbal assaults against media companies and individual
journalists. The outlets most frequently targeted are the national dailies El
Universo, La Hora, El Comercio, and Expreso, along with the
television network Teleamazonas. Dozens of TV, print, and radio journalists
have been targeted in personal and derogatory ways. The president has described
critics in the press as “ignorant,” “trash-talking,” “liars,” “unethical,”
“mediocre,” “ink-stained hit men,” and “political actors who are trying to
oppose the revolutionary government.”

The administration has not confined its message-control
efforts to state media. Correa makes frequent use of cadenas, the presidential
broadcast addresses, which pre-empt programming on all stations nationwide.
From January 2007 to May 2011, Ecuadoran television was pre-empted 1,025 times
for cadenas totaling more than 150 hours, according to Fundación Ethos, a nonpartisan
Mexico-based research organization. Mauricio Rodas, Ethos’ general director,
said that cadenas are traditionally used at times of national emergency, but in
the Correa administration, they have become “a tool for propaganda and
confrontation.”

In at least 15 other instances since December 2009, the
administration has ordered individual broadcasters to give over portions of
their news programming to government “rebuttals,” according to Fundamedios. In
ordering these rebuttals, the administration claims authority from the
country’s broadcast law. Local press advocates say the government is
over-reaching, noting that Article 59 of the broadcast law authorizes
government use of cadenas “exclusively for information regarding the activities
of the respective offices, ministries, or public entities.” In published
comments, Communications Secretary Alvarado has justified the use of cadenas on
the grounds that they allow the government to convey the “truth” in the face of
misinformation.

But time and again, the Correa administration has conflated
its own viewpoint with the “truth” and portrayed differing perspectives as
“lies.” The arrest of Irma Parra back in April illustrates the president’s
intolerance to criticism, said Hinostroza, the Teleamazonas anchor. Parra was
arrested in the city of Riobamba after she made a gesture toward Correa’s
motorcade that she said was intended to express opposition to the
administration-backed ballot questions going before voters in May, news reports
said. Correa labeled the gesture obscene, according to those reports, and
confronted his constituent and had her arrested.

And when his actions were challenged in the press, the
president resorted again to the use of governmental powers to censor and
attack. “Correa has an obsession with critical media, and that’s why he wants
to regulate content,” said Hinostroza. “The Correa administration has declared
the press as its main enemy. They want to shut us down.”

Carlos Lauría is senior coordinator for CPJ’s Americas
program. He led a fact-finding mission to Ecuador in April 2011.

• Ensure that provisions in the pending communication bill in the National Assembly respect guarantees on freedom of expression enshrined in the constitution and in international covenants ratified by Ecuador.

• Use cadenas in compliance with Ecuadoran law, which authorizes their use “exclusively for information regarding the activities of the respective offices, ministries, or public entities.”

• Show greater tolerance toward media criticism and stop personal attacks aimed at discrediting journalists and their news outlets. Halt the use of inflammatory language, such as labeling critics as being “ignorant” or “liars.”

• Put an end to systematic campaigns aimed at discrediting critical journalists, including efforts carried out by media outlets sympathetic to the government.